Sometimes, I like to post several performances of the same Lied. In this case, I am posting Wolfe’s setting of Goethe’s poem “Kennst du das Land”. The three singers whom I have chosen are: Irmgard Seefried, Helen Watts, and Frida Leider.
Goethe wrote a novel of formation (Bildungsroman in German) called Wilhem Meister, and for over a century composers have been drawn to it and the enigmatic songs of the waif-like Mignon.
In the 19th century a great many composers were drawn to this philosophical coming-of-age tale, and especially to the subsidiary character of the mysterious Mignon. Although the story contains a total of eight songs, one in particular has attracted almost twice as many settings as all the others put together.
Kennst du das land (Do you know the land?), in which the enigmatic child reveals tantalising and fleeting fragments of her traumatic past and expresses her desire to find a father figure in the novel’s young protagonist – commanded the attention of Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt, of Tchaikovsky, Wolf and even Alban Berg
Mignon is either 13 or 14 and has a mysterious past. She is different from a normal Romantic heroine because she is androgynous. People keep asking whether she is a boy or a girl. She is otherworldly as well. In the book, after she’s acted in a Nativity play she wants to remain as an angel because she feels more at home in that realm than she does on earth.
Goethe’s poem.
Wolf, Mignon (Kennst du das Land)
Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn,
Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen glühn,
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,
Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht?
Kennst du es wohl?
Dahin! Dahin
Möcht’ ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn.
Kennst du das Haus? Auf Säulen ruht sein Dach;
Es glänzt der Saal, es schimmert das Gemach,
Und Marmorbilder stehn und sehn mich an:
Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, getan?
Kennst du es wohl?
Dahin! Dahin
Möcht’ ich mit dir, o mein Beschützer, ziehn.
Kennst du den Berg und seinen Wolkensteg?
Das Maultier sucht im Nebel seinen Weg;
In Höhlen wohnt der Drachen alte Brut;
Es stürzt der Fels und über ihn die Flut!
Kennst du ihn wohl?
Dahin! dahin
Geht unser Weg! O Vater, laß uns ziehn
Do you know the land
Do you know the land where the lemons blossom,
Where oranges grow golden among dark leaves,
A gentle wind drifts from the blue sky,
The myrtle stands silent, the laurel upright,
Do you perhaps know it?
There it is, there it is
I would like to go with you, my love.
Do you know the house? Columns support its roof;
Its great hall gleams, its chambers shimmer,
And marble statues stand and look at me:
What have they done to you, poor child?
Do you perhaps know it?
There it is, There it is
I would like to go with you, my protector.
Do you know the mountain and its cloudy path?
The mule seeks its path through the mist,
The old brood of dragons lives in high caves;
The rock plummets, and over it the torrent!
There it is, there it is
It runs away from us! O father, let us go!
Hugo Wolf
March 13, 1860 – Feb. 22, 1903
Hugo Wolf was a composer who brought the 19th-century German lied, or art song, to its highest point of development.
Wolf studied at the Vienna Conservatory (1875–77) but had a moody and irascible temperament and was expelled from the conservatory following his outspoken criticism of his masters. In 1875 he met the composer Richard Wagner, from whom he received encouragement. He met Johannes Brahms in 1879, and from him also he received encouragement and the urging to broaden his musical focus and his career. He was also a friend of Gustav Mahler as a young man. In the late 1870s Wolf apparently contracted the syphilis that was to cripple and kill him. In the repeated relapses of the disease, Wolf would enter deep depressions and was unable to compose, but during remissions he was radiant and highly inspired. In 1883 Wolf became music critic of the Wiener Salonblatt; his weekly reviews provide considerable insight into the Viennese musical world of his day.
His early songs include settings of poems by J.W. von Goethe, Nikolaus Lenau, Heinrich Heine, and Joseph von Eichendorff. In 1883 he began his symphonic poem Penthesilea, based on the tragedy by Heinrich von Kleist. From 1888 onward he composed a vast number of songs on poems of Goethe, Eduard Friedrich Mörike, and others. The Spanisches Liederbuch (“Spanish Songbook”), on poems of P.J.L. von Heyse and Emanuel von Geibel, appeared in 1891, followed by the Italienisches Liederbuch (part 1, 1892; part 2, 1896). Other song cycles were on poems of Henrik Ibsen and Michelangelo. His first opera, Corregidor (1895; composed on a story by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón), was a failure when it was produced at Mannheim in 1896; a revised version was produced at Strasbourg in 1898. His second opera, Manuel Venegas, also after Alarcón, remained unfinished.
Wolf ’s reputation as a song composer resulted in the formation in his lifetime of Wolf societies in Berlin and Vienna. Yet the meager income he derived from his work compelled him to rely on the generosity of his friends. In 1897, ostensibly following upon a rebuke from Mahler but actually on account of growing signs of insanity and general muscular weakness, he was confined to a mental home. He was temporarily discharged in 1898, but soon afterward he unsuccessfully attempted to commit suicide, and in October 1898 he requested to be placed in an asylum in Vienna.
Wolf wrote about 300 songs, many published posthumously. Of his first 100—from his early years—he only counted a handful worthwhile. But his output in the mature years was supremely original, in the finest tradition of the German lied. Wolf excelled at creating vocal melodic lines that express every emotional nuance of a given poetic text. The atmosphere of his songs ranges from tender love lyrics to satirical humour to deeply felt spiritual suffering. The vocal melodic line is subtly combined with strikingly original harmonies in the piano accompaniment, resulting in Wolf’s remarkable fusion of music and speech.